Philip Roth - Letting Go

Gruber, thinking himself unobserved, made various noises; some were necessary to the maintenance of his body, the rest were appreciative, recollective. I came into the room and whispered hello, though it would have taken a cannon to awaken the two sleepers.

“Sit down. Want to see Europe? Want to see how the other half lives?” he asked. “Ten countries in fifteen minutes. England, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, France, Andorra—”

I plunged down into the deepest chair I could find and groaned like a man twice my age. “I’ve been to Europe,” I said.

“Not in style, boy,” the doctor said. “Bet you’ve never seen little Andorra. Look at that, that’s me eating cannelloni in Sorrento.”

“I think I saw you eating cannelloni in Fiesole.”

“I ate it everywhere. Do you know the three smallest countries in Europe?”

“Andorra,” I said, “and two others.”

The wind leaving his sails came whistling by my ears. “Okay,” he said, “a wise guy like your old man,” and clicked off the machine. And then the room was dark, except for what light came up from the street below. We both burrowed into our chairs, witnesses only to our own thoughts and the deep sleep of the others.

“Look …” Dr. Gruber began.

Well, at least I would not have to bring it up myself; he too knew a mistake when he saw one.

“Yes?” I said, inviting him not to be shy.

“Look, who’s this E. E. Cunningham? What’s he trying to do, put something over on the public?”

“What? Who?”

“E. E. Cunningham. He writes poems. Does he think he’s going to put something over on the public?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

“What is that stuff supposed to be anyway? A poem? ”

I had been willing to raise my mind out of grogginess for a discussion of the crisis in my home, but I could not manage to drag it higher, to manage Gruberian literary criticism. I remembered that when he had read Hemingway in Life , it had been me to whom he had come directly with his complaint: “What is this guy supposed to be, great?” Now, I supposed, Cummings had been quoted in Time , or, who knows, the ADA Journal. Culture is everywhere.

“I don’t think the guy’s going to put anything over on anybody. People,” Gruber said, “have got a lot of native sense.”

At that moment I couldn’t think of anybody I knew who had a drop, but I only nodded my head. I said, “Dr. Gruber, I hate to change the subject, but don’t you think she drinks a good deal?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. S.”

“Fay? She’s a good-time Charley! She’s a terrific gal!”

“But she drinks a lot. Is my father drunk?”

“He had the time of his life — he’s a new man. Christ, he was a melancholy specimen. Now he’s topnotch.”

“Do you think he’s going to be happy, Doc?”

“What’s the matter with you, boy? He is happy. Look at him now — he’s smiling, for God’s sake, in his sleep. We had the time of our lives. ” He suddenly leaped up. “Here,” he said, “I want you to see some happy faces.”

He flipped on the machine. “Switzerland! Just before we left. Skating in November, can you imagine?”

Alas, we were on a lake, cupped between two white peaks. Dr. Gruber was holding up Mrs. Silberman under the arms; the two of them were laughing, their heads thrown back, their mouths open. Over at the left-hand edge of the picture, stood my father, wearing a feathered Alpine hat and his gray pin-striped suit. Like the others, he was on skates, but his attention didn’t seem to be on the sport.

“Look at her ankles! ” Dr. Gruber said, but I was looking at those two eyes that were the color of my own. They were directed toward the distant mountains, fastened forever on the impossible.

In the morning, of course, neither Millie nor I, nor either of the lovers, commented on the fact that once again at our breakfast table sat three.

Sarah Vaughan awakened Martha Reganhart. She twisted around until she had plugged “Tenderly” out of her ears with her sheet and pillow — but then Markie was in bed beside her.

“Where’s the turkey?”

“Honey, it’s too early. Go color, go back to bed—”

“Sissy’s playing records.”

“Go tell Sissy to turn them off.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Tell Cynthia to. Markie baby, Mother’s beat. Will you just give her five more minutes? Tell Cynthia to tell Sissy to turn down the volume.”

“What?”

“The volume. Tell her …” She caught sight of the whole family’s dirty laundry heaped up in a corner of the gray room, and she almost went under. “Tell her to turn down the phonograph.” A bleary eye fell on the electric clock. “It’s seven, honey — it’s a holiday. Tell Cynthia—”

“Cynthia’s talking on the phone.”

“What phone?”

“She called the weather.”

“Oh Christ, Mark, tell your sister to hang up! Tell Sissy to lower the phonograph. Oh baby, your pants are wet—”

“It’s going to be clouds all day,” Mark said.

“Markie—”

You took my lips ,

You took my love ,

Soooooooo—

“Sissy! Lower that thing!”

“I can’t hear you,” Sissy shouted back; and a good forty minutes before it was supposed to, Mrs. Reganhart’s day began.

Sissy was in her room, wearing a gossamer shorty nightgown and painting her toenails.

“Sissy, where are the oranges? How do you expect my kids to have breakfast without orange juice?”

“I thought they were my oranges.”

“How could your oranges be on the top shelf, Sister? Where’s your head?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sissy, yesterday I found a bunch of bananas in the refrigerator. My bananas. Ten million dollars’ worth of advertising, and it goes right over your head. I’m at the edge with you, Sissy, I really am. Can’t you keep that box off in the morning?”

“Jesus, you just got up. What are you coming on so salty for?”

“Please, do me a favor. Let’s make a rule. No Sarah Vaughan until ten. There are two kids here, plus me, right? Either let’s make this place a house, keep it a house, or else — I don’t know. Can’t you even close the door when you take a bath?”

“What’s eating you, for God’s sake? What are you so prissy about all of a sudden? The kid’s four years old—”

“Just do me a favor,” Martha Reganhart said, “and close the door.”

“I’m claustrophobic.”

“You’re a goddam exhibitionist.”

“For four-year-olds?”

“I’m not even talking about Mark. I’m talking about Cynthia. She’s a big girl.”

“Christ, we’re all one sex.”

“There’s something about the sight of you shaving your legs in the bathtub that I think has a deleterious effect on her. All right?”

“You think she tends to be a little dykey?”

“That’s a bad joke—” Martha Reganhart said. “Why don’t you take it back?”

“I will. I’m sorry, Martha. I am.”

Martha looked out past the window sill full of cigarette butts into the holiday sky: clouds all day. Oh God. In the room, Sissy’s underwear was hanging over chair backs, on doorknobs, and on the two end posts of the bed; one brassiere was hooked over an andiron in the unused fireplace. Sissy herself sat on Martha’s Mexican rug (the one she had moved into this back bedroom as a come-on for prospective roomers) painting her toenails. Martha decided not to express the whole new rush of irritation she felt toward the girl. The only roomer Martha could put up with anyway was no roomer at all; besides, Sissy’s forty a month helped pay the rent. So she smiled at Sissy — who had, after all, behind those pendulous boobs, a big pendulous heart — and slingshotted a brassiere off the bedstead into Sissy’s curly brown hair. It collapsed around her ears.